FLASH: Lawyers discover internets. Film at 11.
The most egregious example of ivy-league whining I have seen in ages ran in yesterday's WaPo:She graduated Phi Beta Kappa, has published in top legal journals and completed internships at leading institutions in her field. So when the Yale law student interviewed with 16 firms for a job this summer, she was concerned that she had only four call-backs. She was stunned when she had zero offers.
Though it is difficult to prove a direct link, the woman thinks she is a victim of a new form of reputation-maligning: online postings with offensive content and personal attacks that can be stored forever and are easily accessible through a Google search.
Yes, that's right. She suspects she didn't get the job she wanted because she was thoroughly flamed on AutoAdmit.
My own feeling here is that she got what was coming to her. The internet is a big, scary place. Those of us who live here have to live by our wits and our reputations. In WaPo's story, the Yalie in question feels that troll posts about her womanly virtues (or lack thereof) caused potential employers to shun her--thus leaving her with a mound of debt and no big-city firm job with which to pay it off.
She should have known--or quickly figured out-- that AutoAdmit is a notorious trolls' nest. I have avoided it at all costs, even in my deepest moments of law school application angst. The application process does strange things to otherwise good people: it makes us angry, irritable, cynical. It strips away our self-esteem and self-regard. Its capriciousness and arbitrariness make us capricious and arbitrary in its own image.
I have thus noticed that any gathering of potential law students quickly degenerates into a pissing contest: What was your LSAT? Where'd you go for undergrad? Where are you applying? You applied where?? You'll never make it--you're better off in the third tier!
To this bitter brew of self-loathing and one-upmanship, sites like AutoAdmit add the relative anonymity of the Internet. What emerges is a perfect storm for trolls. Trolls are vicious, aggressive, and obstreperous. Meanwhile, the emotionally-vulnerable user population cannot help but feed the trolls.
Of course, this isn't new. But law students are, as a whole, not as technically competent as they should be. Where, in other fora, the eventual remedy would be to killfile the worst trolls, law students stupidly continue to expose themselves to their withering attacks.
Does she have a cause of action against anonymous trolls? Possibly, especially if we can be convinced that the troll posts against her were provably libelous. According to the article, the statements would probably have been considered defamatory per se, since the allegations seemed to be of "moral turpitude," and/or "loathsome disease." But even if we grant that the statements were defamatory per se, can our Yalie flambeé prove that those statements were the proximate cause of her failure to gain employment? I'm not sure she can. (I am tempted to make a lame joke about the impossibility of making the plaintiff whole, but I will refrain from doing so).
In any case, there is a lesson here for all of us. Don't hang out where you're likely to be trolled. Nice girls shouldn't hang out where their reputations might be damaged later. And if they do, they should be prepared to deal with the repercussions.
Though it is difficult to prove a direct link, the woman thinks she is a victim of a new form of reputation-maligning: online postings with offensive content and personal attacks that can be stored forever and are easily accessible through a Google search.
Yes, that's right. She suspects she didn't get the job she wanted because she was thoroughly flamed on AutoAdmit.
My own feeling here is that she got what was coming to her. The internet is a big, scary place. Those of us who live here have to live by our wits and our reputations. In WaPo's story, the Yalie in question feels that troll posts about her womanly virtues (or lack thereof) caused potential employers to shun her--thus leaving her with a mound of debt and no big-city firm job with which to pay it off.
She should have known--or quickly figured out-- that AutoAdmit is a notorious trolls' nest. I have avoided it at all costs, even in my deepest moments of law school application angst. The application process does strange things to otherwise good people: it makes us angry, irritable, cynical. It strips away our self-esteem and self-regard. Its capriciousness and arbitrariness make us capricious and arbitrary in its own image.
I have thus noticed that any gathering of potential law students quickly degenerates into a pissing contest: What was your LSAT? Where'd you go for undergrad? Where are you applying? You applied where?? You'll never make it--you're better off in the third tier!
To this bitter brew of self-loathing and one-upmanship, sites like AutoAdmit add the relative anonymity of the Internet. What emerges is a perfect storm for trolls. Trolls are vicious, aggressive, and obstreperous. Meanwhile, the emotionally-vulnerable user population cannot help but feed the trolls.
Of course, this isn't new. But law students are, as a whole, not as technically competent as they should be. Where, in other fora, the eventual remedy would be to killfile the worst trolls, law students stupidly continue to expose themselves to their withering attacks.
Does she have a cause of action against anonymous trolls? Possibly, especially if we can be convinced that the troll posts against her were provably libelous. According to the article, the statements would probably have been considered defamatory per se, since the allegations seemed to be of "moral turpitude," and/or "loathsome disease." But even if we grant that the statements were defamatory per se, can our Yalie flambeé prove that those statements were the proximate cause of her failure to gain employment? I'm not sure she can. (I am tempted to make a lame joke about the impossibility of making the plaintiff whole, but I will refrain from doing so).
In any case, there is a lesson here for all of us. Don't hang out where you're likely to be trolled. Nice girls shouldn't hang out where their reputations might be damaged later. And if they do, they should be prepared to deal with the repercussions.